When a city decides to ban shark fin soup, it's a good bet it's trying to distract from its failures on things it's supposed to be working on.

Take Calgary, where city hall just voted to increase city taxes by 5.5%. Banning shark fin soup is a cheap stunt to distract attention from the financial incompetence of a city council that can't balance the books in Canada's richest city.

This sort of self-righteousness by minor-league politicians isn't new.

In the 1980s, declaring a town a "nuclear-weapons free zone" was all the rage.

Shark fins are the modern version, but instead of scapegoating those evil Americans, it targets Chinese-Canadians, especially new immigrants who still keep their traditional culinary customs.

Toronto's disgraceful version of the law sets out fines as high as $100,000 for people caught selling shark fins -- or even just possessing them. So the restaurant would be put out of business.

Many cultures have unusual food, but only the Chinese have been targeted through this bigoted law.

Jews have their kosher slaughter and Muslims have their halal. Like all slaughters, they're not pretty to watch.

But no city council in Canada would dare take on those two politically protected ethnic groups.

You don't have to get that exotic, of course. Some of the same people backing the shark fin bans are behind PETA, the animal rights extremist group that not only wants to ban meat, fur and leather, but even milk and eggs.

Shark fins are their precedent, from which they'll ratchet up other bans. Do you really want to let showboating politicians consider whether you can eat veal parmigiana?

Horse meat is a delicacy in Quebec. Rabbit and deer meat is very chic. And, of course, some cultures eat dog.

Why are those exotic foods OK, but only a Chinese cuisine is banned -- with a fine designed to destroy a family's life savings?

It's not because sharks are endangered. They're not. It's not because finning a shark -- the practice of cutting off a shark's fin while it's alive -- is cruel.

Canada has a modern shark harvesting industry, monitored by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to ensure conservation.

By comparison, we boil lobsters alive in the classiest restaurants in Canada. But that's not even the point. These busybody laws don't discriminate between shark fins harvested humanely and those cut off the fish alive. It's all banned. Sorry, that's not about being humane. That's about being punitive.

Justice Spence threw out Toronto's law, pointing out that it just wasn't Toronto's city business, it wasn't based on any scientific evidence and the justification -- Toronto's health and safety -- was a laugh.

Those are all good reasons, and his ruling should be a template for other anti-racism activists across Canada to follow.

The Chinese were picked because traditionally they don't make a political fuss. But anyone else who wants the freedom to choose what they eat or drink ought to stand with them. Your food is next -- and your leather and fur, too.